OpenAI and Thinking Machines recently formed a partnership to help Philippine enterprises, growing businesses, and educational institutions to achieve a more secure, practical and organization-wide AI adoption.
In a recent media briefing in Makati City, the two companies also highlighted that OpenAI’s Partner Network is designed to help organizations translate AI ambitions into measurable impact by connecting them with partners that bring industry expertise, technical capabilities, deployment experience and strong customer relationships.
For Thinking Machines, the Advanced Partner recognition underscores its technical capabilities and delivery track record while highlighting the potential for Filipino talent to develop and deploy world-class AI solutions for businesses and broader societal challenges.
‘Being recognized as an OpenAI Advanced Partner is an important validation of the capability our team has built over the last decade,’ said Niek van Veen, vice president for commercial at Thinking Machines.
‘What excites me even more is what comes next. Expanding our work together through ChatGPT Business and ChatGPT Edu enables us to support more organizations, from growing businesses to educational institutions, while continuing to help enterprises deploy AI at scale and developing Filipino talent,’ he added.
Thinking Machines is one of only 30 companies worldwide to be named an OpenAI Advanced Partner.
AI is already becoming a vital part of how Filipinos work.
According to the companies, about 40 percent of ChatGPT messages in the Philippines are work-related, highlighting the opportunity for organizations to move from individual use of AI toward coordinated, organization-wide capabilities.
They said the evolution of AI is also pushing organizations beyond simple productivity assistance toward more sophisticated, agentic workflows that can change how teams make decisions, serve customers and accomplish tasks.
For Philippine companies, however, they said the next challenge is making AI adoption repeatable and sustainable across the organization. Thinking Machines works with enterprises across industries to identify high-value workflows, build AI fluency, redesign processes and deploy AI within existing data, governance and operating environments.
‘AI is easy to experiment with; transforming an organization with it is harder,’ van Veen said.
‘The opportunity now is to turn familiarity with AI into organizational capability-embedding it into the way businesses operate, make decisions, and create value.’
They said preparing employees to work effectively alongside AI is equally important.
The expanded collaboration also places emphasis on making AI accessible beyond large enterprises.
Through ChatGPT Business, Thinking Machines said it can support growing businesses seeking to incorporate AI into their operations, while ChatGPT Edu provides an avenue for educational institutions to explore AI-enabled teaching, learning and institutional workflows. The broader approach reflects the changing nature of AI adoption in the Philippines, where businesses of different sizes and educational institutions are increasingly looking for practical applications rather than simply experimenting with generative AI.
For the country’s technology ecosystem, the partnership also reinforces the potential of Filipino professionals and technical teams to participate in the development and deployment of advanced AI capabilities.